1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a parking assist apparatus and a parking assist method for performing a parking assist control of automatically guiding a vehicle to a target parking position.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a known parking assist apparatus as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 11-208420 which performs a parking assist control of automatically guiding a vehicle to a target parking position, a target parking frame is displayed in a superimposed fashion on an actual image of surroundings of the vehicle displayed on a display monitor before the parking assist control starts. In this parking assist apparatus, a target parking position can be designated by a user operating an adjustment knob so as to change the position of the target parking frame on the display monitor.
To allow the user to set a target parking position, a target parking frame for designating a target parking position is displayed initially in a predetermined default position or an estimated position provided through system calculation on the display monitor. However, the target parking frame is not always initial-displayed in a parking position (including the orientation thereof) that is desirable to every user. That is, there is a certain limit of the accuracy in estimating an initial position of the target parking frame because the relationship of the parking start position to a target parking position varies depending on the driving characteristics of individual drivers. Therefore, if the initial position of the target parking frame does not correspond to the parking start position-to-target parking position relationship to which a user is accustomed, the user has to bear an inconvenience of going through the positional adjustment of the target parking frame for every operation of parking assist control.